KIRKUS REVIEW

A ride along the Devil’s Highway—in
a nicely air-conditioned sedan.

There was a time, it seems, when if
Mexico were to pay for the wall of Donald Trump’s dreams, the government might
have approached the Arce family for a loan. Though not in the Carlos Slim
category, the author’s mother, for instance, “was responsible for putting Taxco
silver on the map all over the United States.” Small wonder, perhaps, that Arce
grew up with an entrepreneurial spirit. That spirit alone was not enough to
secure her a berth on the lumbering ship that is America; the dramatic heart of
the book is a series of episodes when, having landed a very high-powered, very
remunerative gig on Wall Street, Arce suffers panic attacks while waiting for
the day when her fellow suits, to say nothing of la Migra, discover
that she doesn’t have a green card. “I tried to blend in as much as I could,”
she writes, “and in the process I lost so much of myself, of my culture, of my
Mexican-ness. In that regard, I am a recovering American elitist.” Arce writes
from an unusual position; we have plenty of chronicles of crossings by campesinos
but none by a country clubber. The author’s travails and turmoils eventually
resulted in her leaving Wall Street, two years after getting her papers, to
work for immigrant rights (“God—use me,” she implores in an overwrought
moment, a tone that, sadly, isn’t an exception). They also resulted in this
book, which, though doubtless well-intended, doesn’t pack a lot of punch: “The
plight of undocumented immigrants in this country is currently a hot topic
again,” she rightly notes, but her engagement is too narrowly circumscribed to
speak much to the experiences of the less privileged.

Undistinguished as memoir or
reportage but still of some interest for the unusual circumstances surrounding
it.

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